Why the Sea Is Boiling Hot
by ag-sasami
Summary: A collection of drabbles from an assortment of character perspectives.
1. In Somnus Veritas

Just a little something I wrote based on the following challenge prompt: _I tell myself all the words he surely meant to say. (Between The Lines, Sara Bareilles)_

***~*~***

**In Somnus Veritas**

Alice wasn't sure how long she had been asleep. When she fell down the rabbit hole she remembered the heavy thud of ribs meeting garden-floor and breath rushing from lungs. The first time felt like dying. Falling back up had been nothing. Literally. A firm palm against her back, a quick gasp of air, and then here beneath the scratchy hospital sheets.

She was sure, however, that she had been dreaming somewhere between the Looking Glass Room and the IVs and beeping machines. They were but shadow thoughts now as she blinked in the harsh sunlight filtering between the curtains, but the voices within were real enough.

_Don't go. _

_Stay here, with me. _

_I think that maybe I love you._

"He's gone." Alice furrowed her brow, letting her words bounce around in her head. She was back in her own world alone. An unfamiliar knot tightened in her throat, knowing he was still back in his tea house in Wonderland.

"Who's gone?" Carol was genuinely puzzled, but Alice's thoughts had quickly stumbled onward, sleep whispers filling her ears. He wasn't the only one she left behind the Looking Glass.

_I'm sorry Jellybean. _

_I wish I had known I needed to fight back. _

_I love you. _

"Dad." She choked out through the despair in her throat.


	2. Curtsy

Written for the following prompt: _ It's such a shame to let you walk away. (Ashes And Wine - A Fine Frenzy)_

***~*~***

**Curtsy**

Before the queen, Duchess was cold. Jaw clenched, eyes smoldering, all but boiling beneath her pale skin. She was a pawn, an unlikely chess piece chosen to keep the prince in check, and she was keenly aware of it. The queen regularly degraded her, mocked and patronized her, reminded her how worthless she was without her position as _fiancée_ to the prince. So she kept her mouth tightly shut and her words short to keep her head, with a bow here and a curtsy there and always the most dutiful behavior in the presence of the court. Had the queen been more perceptive, less wooed by Duchess's calculated flattery, she would have beheaded the girl for her subtle insolences.

Jack was little better than his mother when it came to humiliating her, and she genuflected to him much in the way she did before his mother. The prince turned king was conscious of her lock-jawed answers and eyes ablaze and derisive curtsies. But her blood did not boil in his presence, and behind her detached obedience was an air of defeat and the faintest hint of grief. Her fondness for him was common knowledge, so it was not without regret that he informed her that their engagement would need to be thoughtfully reconsidered.

"Your majesty." On that day she curtsied with clenched teeth and damp eyes; with her familiar airs of grace and disdain and perhaps, he thought, a little more sorrow than she had intended to reveal.


	3. Stole Her Tarts

A little (not quite) Queen and King of Hearts, as romantic as I imagine they get.  
Written for the prompt: _After casual sex with your office or classroom crush, your crush says the words, "I love you." What happens then?_

*~*

**Stole Her Tarts**

Her hair was disheveled and glorious about her face and across the pillows. She was practically aglow in the aftermath of their passion, at least that's how Winston saw her. He had been courting the young soon-to-be-queen for months, and the royal court had stopped questioning his presence at odd hours of the day and night. This particular odd hour was roughly lunching time, though given that Time was something of a myth in Wonderland, that approximation was quite rough indeed. Regardless, she had summoned him on a suggestive whim which the messenger was loathe to repeat to the eager courtier. So now there they lay, tousled and humid in her expansive silk sheets, and Winston was overcome in the afterglow.

"Mary Elizabeth Constance Devilius Heart, I do believe I love you." She propped herself up on one arm to consider him thoroughly for a moment. Her eyes were harsh as she blew a hair out of her face.

"Well Winston, a queen needs a king. I suppose you'll do."


	4. Horse

**Horse**

The air is stifling and the atmospheric glare filters through even in the denseness of the forest. Her spine is ablaze from sitting so awkwardly stiff on the horse all afternoon, and her discomfort has only increased since Hatter cheekily suggested she let him take her weight. In spite of her adamant dismissal of his suggestion, Alice smiles. Just a _little_. She consciously ignores the niggle in the not so back of her mind, the one pointing out how comfortable she would be with arms wrapped around him. The smell of leather and tea makes the niggle harder to ignore.


	5. Deranged

**Deranged**

On her side of the glass Hatter seems odder. In Wonderland his quirks were in context and seemed downright reasonable, but here in the Other World he tended toward what was seen as lunacy. Alice found that it didn't change her feelings for him, because Wonderland Hatter and Other World Hatter were still the same person. It did, however, make their relationship more complicated. Case in point: she came home early one afternoon and overheard Carol on the phone mentioning how _positively insane _Alice's new boyfriend seemed, in spite of her insistence that she absolutely approved of one David Hatter.


	6. Torture

**Torture**

Nauseating was the best way—no—the _only_ way to describe the foul green light of the room. It was like infection seeping in through his eyes between flashes of pain. Pain was something he could take, could dish out, but with the bubbling ooze light and the unhinged cackling of the Tweedles Hatter couldn't find the place in his mind where the pain fizzled out. It was all crackling heat and heart-stopping electricity and violence and blood and sick green giggling and where was Alice. He had to find that place. Had to find Alice. Had to save her.


End file.
